Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging Review

Sebastian Junger, the bestselling author of War and The Perfect Storm, takes a critical look at post-traumatic stress disorder and the many challenges today’s returning veterans face in modern society.

There are ancient tribal human behaviors-loyalty, inter-reliance, cooperation-that flare up in communities during times of turmoil and suffering. These are the very same behaviors that typify good soldiering and foster a sense of belonging among troops, whether they’re fighting on the front lines or engaged in non-combat activities away from the action. Drawing from history, psychology, and anthropology, bestselling author Sebastian Junger shows us just how at odds the structure of modern society is with our tribal instincts, arguing that the difficulties many veterans face upon returning home from war do not stem entirely from the trauma they’ve suffered, but also from the individualist societies they must reintegrate into.

A 2011 study by the Canadian Forces and Statistics Canada reveals that 78 percent of military suicides from 1972 to the end of 2006 involved veterans. Though these numbers present an implicit call to action, the government is only just taking steps now to address the problems veterans face when they return home. But can the government ever truly eliminate the challenges faced by returning veterans? Or is the problem deeper, woven into the very fabric of our modern existence? Perhaps our circumstances are not so bleak, and simply understanding that beneath our modern guises we all belong to one tribe or another would help us face not just the problems of our nation but of our individual lives as well.

Well-researched and compellingly written, this timely look at how veterans react to coming home will reconceive our approach to veteran’s affairs and help us to repair our current social dynamic.

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Some Testimonial About This Book:

Petra X

Update Yesterday I had a friend request saying that he didn't want to friend me just to tell me that he objected to my review being so prominent when it was wrong, crap etc. as the author hadn't meant...

Diane S ?

Proves the adage that good things can come in small packages. In this short book, not a wasted word, Junger combines memoir, journalism and scholarly writing to give us a book that makes one think abo...

Greta

A nostalgic and masculist view on group behaviour and PTSD. Junger promotes a more tribal lifestyle and he thinks we all need hardship, catastrophes and war in order to connect with others. I could ha...

Michael

Junger has an appealing message. That humans have evolved a high order of altruism associated with our tribal social nature which leads us to be willing to take great risks to save another member of t...

Matt

“Robert Frost famously wrote that home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. The word ‘tribe’ is far harder to define, but a start might be the people you feel...

Sam Quixote

Is Western civilization the pinnacle of human achievement? In Tribe, Sebastian Junger questions this notion by looking at, among other examples, why colonial Americans left behind the burgeoning settl...

Allison Scott

There are many good ideas in this book, including disorders of trauma as disorders of integration, isolation, and group dynamic, however I had too many issues with the way this story was told to fully...

Monica

**Warning: This review may be longer than the entire book.**Interesting and thought provoking; if not entirely convincing. On the one hand, some very compelling ideas about the feeling of smaller, clo...

Otis Chandler

A fascinating book about community and belonging, and how modern society has moved us away from our roots in potentially signifiant ways. The book opens with a thought provoking fact: in early America...

Clif Hostetler

This book provides a convincing articulation of reasons why modern society is ill suited to the innate social needs of homo sapiens (i.e. human beings). Our ancestors lived—and evolved—many thousa...